Shelly here from 100Things2Do.ca. I’m commandeering Sherri’s blog page for the next 5 weeks to show you how we are making over her basement office into a rustic-industrial workspace.

The ORC is a challenge to completely makeover one room in 6 weeks. We’re talking flooring, lighting, plumbing (if applicable) and of course paint – all to be documented on our blogs over a 6 week period, with the final reveal of the completed room scheduled for November 7th.

There are no prizes for this challenge (unless you make a whopping impression on Better Homes & Gardens). It’s about inspiring others to take on a challenge in their own homes by showing how easy (or difficult) it is. You’ll see room transformations week-by-week by visiting the ORC Guest Participants link page.

This week Sherri (DetailsRenovations.com) and I started with the demolition of the basement office, and we found a few surprises along the way…

The desk and cabinets were built-in – which we kinda’ expected – but what we didn’t expect was that they were built-in before the room was even finished. The drywall behind the cabinet section hadn’t been taped and mudded and the carpet had been adhered right to the wall!

Please notice that I am working in my bare feet at the beginning of the video and with shoes on at the end…

WEAR SAFETY GEAR!

A nail in the foot is a very bad way to learn to wear shoes (trust me). I really should have had protective eyewear on as well.

Sherri let me loose with her version of “Lucille” (Walking Dead fans anywhere?), which she called “Fubar”. A brand name? An acronym? I’ll let you decide.

But letting me loose with Fubar on my first ever demo day was clearly more than I could handle and I made a few extra holes in the drywall. (Sorry Sherri!)

Fortunately (unfortunately?) there were sections of the wall that needed repair anyways:

Sherri (a licensed contractor) gave me a crash course in drywall patching, taping and mudding – which believe it or not, I’ve actually wanted to learn.

We filled the larger holes with expanding foam. Once the foam had cured, Sherri cut off the excess and we were able to putty over.

I know, it looks worse than when we started, but it always looks worse before it looks better and these repairs were long overdue.

The opposite wall in this basement office didn’t need as much work, so I was able to fill the nail holes from art that was hanging, remove the baseboard, sand the walls and even get the first coat of paint on (London Fog by Benjamin Moore)

I’m not going to show you the whole wall just yet – I’ve got to leave something to Week 3!

I will however give you a sneak peek at the flooring that is going to be installed soon:

Speaking of flooring, Sherri and I also got the old, glued-down carpet out of the room ready for our next steps!

Want to see where we’re going with this?

Rustic industrial basement office

pack up room

demo cabinets

patch drywall

paint walls

strip flooring

install faux brick wall

sand, prime and paint doors and trim

install new baseboard

install recessed lighting

lay new flooring

zinc finish on filing cabinet

strip door for desk and stain

build pipe shelving

stain shelf boards

build pipe desk

order plexi-glass for desk top

office seating

staging/styling

Feeling pretty good about the progress this week – fingers crossed we can keep the momentum going into week 3. Come back next Wednesday and see how far we get.